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Comments on Should we be able to tag answers?
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Should we be able to tag answers?
On some of our communities, it would be helpful to be able to label answers systematically:
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On Code Golf, by language.
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On Software Development, Power Users, or Linux Systems, by specific version/platform/library -- for example, if the answer to a C++ question is different for C++11 than C++14, or a browser answer is different for Firefox and Chrome, or a front-end question is different for pure Javascript or jQuery.
In some cases perhaps the question should be more specific, but it seems like in some cases it'd be better to have the answers all together. And, of course, on Code Golf, varied answer languages are expected.
It's sometimes useful to be able to just tell at a glance what an answer applies to. There are probably people still using (or maintaining code in) Java 7, so you don't want to nuke those answers, but you want the person who's looking for a current solution to a Java problem to be able to tell at a glance that this answer is for an older version.
Would it make sense to be able to add tags to answers, in addition to the tags on the question?
In addition to making answer scoping more visible, answer tags could support sorting. I'm imagining another sort option at the top of the answers alongside "Score" and Activity", and maybe also showing answer tags in the table of contents. I'm also imagining that this would be something communities would opt into, since it doesn't make sense on every community.
I think tag hierarchies are orthogonal; while (if they exist, which I haven't checked) C++11 and C++14 should be children of C++, a challenge on Code Golf doesn't have any question-level language tags at all.
This isn't a bad idea. I'd like the tag system to have some more features. Why tags on answers could be useful Sys …
1y ago
This seems like a good idea from a programming or computer hardware and software perspective. Choosing the version of …
3y ago
Examining precedent The Stack Exchange network has the core of this feature: you can write `[tag:tag-name]` in the bo …
1y ago
This should probably be per-community configurable. Since even on Code Golf, not all tags are meaningful on answers, one …
3y ago
It sounds like a feature of very limited use. I agree that it would be neat for Code Golf, where different answers are p …
3y ago
Post
This isn't a bad idea. I'd like the tag system to have some more features.
Why tags on answers could be useful
Systems and programming languages can have a lot of versions. For example, consider the previous discussion on Power Users, which is about whether this question should be tagged to indicate a more specific version of Windows. The consensus was not to do so. But suppose I were using an older version of Windows, and could easily solve the problem in that version. Knowing that OP uses Windows 10 21H1, it could happen that my answer doesn't solve the problem - since Windows updates system settings with most version updates.
Similarly with programming langauges. I asked a question on Unix.SE about trying to install Tensorflow in Python. Some people were saying to use
pip3 install tensorflow, but it turned out that Tensorflow was not supported by my Python version (3.9). After doing a bit of research I found an accurate answer - I needed to run pip3 install tf-nightly instead. If the answerer had added a version tag, I could have understood why the answer wasn't helpful for me. Instead, I downvoted the answer.
Why tags on answers might not help
Tags on answers for Meta sites seem nearly meaningless.
For example, suppose I were to add tags to this answer. I might use some code like
<a class="badge is-tag " href="/categories/3/tags/4964">answers</a>
<a class="badge is-tag " href="categories/3/tags/968">tags</a>
But the question already has these tags, so they aren't necessary on the answer.
Similarly, consider this question from the Languages & Linguistics community. The answer would again only have the same tags as the question (to indicate the language that the question is about).
The same would apply to these communities:
- Judaism
- Language & Linguistic
- Christianity
- Mathematics (for some questions)
- Physics (for some questions)
I would like a tag system for answers to have these features as well:
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It should be possible to post an answer without any tags (although a tag is required for questions). (On reflection, answers for questions like this one seem like they should "need" tags. So perhaps it would be better to allow the person asking the question to choose whether answers will be tagged.)
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User profiles (such as Monica's) mix questions and answers together. This makes it hard to find specific answers (to edit them or for any other reason). If answers have tags, then the same mixing would naturally happen to per-tag post lists such as this one. The system should separate tags for questions and answers to avoid this.
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